s! Yeah, i found is that the *.MIZ file is really just a zip file. You can look inside it with tools like winzip, or 7zip and the files are all inside it, and the missions components and scripts are all embedded inside normal text files and lua files inside the MIZ zip file.

if you open them and are careful, you can directly edit them inside with a text editor and update the miz file without having to go thru the DCS mission editor if you don't want. that makes making bulk updates to things like messages somewhat easier.

(what i'd really like is a find and replace tool that could traverse the contents for me! ) similar to notepad++, find in files function.
DDO